Wesley Wales Anderson was born on May 1, 1969, in Houston, Texas, the son of Texas Ann (Burroughs), an archaeologist, and Melver Leonard Anderson, who worked in advertising and public relations.[2][3][4][5][6] He is the second of three boys; his parents divorced when he was 8.[6] His older brother, Mel, is a doctor, and his younger brother, Eric, is a writer and artist whose paintings and designs have appeared in several of Anderson’s films.[7] Anderson is of Swedish and Norwegian ancestry.[8]

Anderson's first film, Bottle Rocket (1996), based on a short film that he made with Luke and Owen Wilson, was a crime caper focused on a group of young Texans aspiring to achieve major heists. Though well reviewed, it performed poorly at the box office.[11][12][13]

Anderson's next film, Rushmore (1998), a quirky comedy about a high school student's crush on an elementary school teacher, starring Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman, was a critical success.[14] Murray has since appeared in every Anderson film to date. In 2000, filmmaker Martin Scorsese praised Bottle Rocket and Rushmore.[15]

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), Anderson's next comedy-drama film about a successful artistic New York City family and its ostracized patriarch, represented Anderson's greatest success until Moonrise Kingdom in 2012. Earning more than $50 million in domestic box office receipts, the film was nominated for an Academy Award and ranked by an Empire poll as the 159th greatest film ever made.[16]

Anderson's next feature, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), about a Jacques Cousteau-esque documentary filmmaker played by Bill Murray, serves as a classic example of Anderson's style but its critical reception was less favorable than his previous films and its box office did not match the heights of The Royal Tenenbaums.[17] In September 2006, following the disappointing commercial and critical reception of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Steely Dan's Walter Becker and Donald Fagen released a tongue-in-cheek "letter of intervention" for Anderson's artistic "malaise". Proclaiming themselves to be fans of "World Cinema" and Anderson in particular, they offered Anderson their soundtrack services for his Darjeeling Limited, including lyrics for a title track.[18]

The Darjeeling Limited (2007), about three emotionally distant brothers traveling together on a train in India, reflected the more dramatic tone of The Royal Tenenbaums, but faced similar criticisms to The Life Aquatic. Anderson has acknowledged that he went to India to film the 2007 movie, partly as a tribute to the Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray, whose "films have also inspired all my other movies in different ways" (the film is dedicated to him).[19] The film starred Anderson staples Jason Schwartzman and Owen Wilson in addition to Adrien Brody, and the script was co-written by Anderson, Schwartzman and Roman Coppola.[20]

In 2008, Anderson was hired to write the screenplay of the American adaptation of My Best Friend, a French film, for producer Brian Grazer; Anderson's first draft was titled "The Rosenthaler Suite".

Following the critical success of Fantastic Mr. Fox, Anderson made Moonrise Kingdom, which opened the Cannes Film Festival 2012.[21] The film, emblematic of Anderson's style, was a financial success and earned Anderson another Academy Award nomination for his screenplay.

Anderson's latest film, The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), starred Ralph Fiennes, Jude Law, F. Murray Abraham, and Saoirse Ronan, among many others, along with several of his regular collaborators including Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, and Jason Schwartzman.[22] Set in the 1930s, it followed the adventures of M. Gustave, the hotel's concierge, making "a marvelous mockery of history, turning its horrors into a series of graceful jokes and mischievous gestures," according to the New York Times.[23] The film represented one of Anderson's greatest critical and commercial successes, grossing nearly $175 million worldwide and earning dozens of award nominations including nine Oscar nominations with four wins.

Anderson has also created several notable short films. In addition to the original Bottle Rocket short, Anderson made the Paris-set Hotel Chevalier (2007), which was created as a prologue to The Darjeeling Limited and starred Jason Schwartzman and Natalie Portman, and the Italy-set Castello Cavalcanti (2013),[24] which was produced by Prada and starred Jason Schwartzman as an unsuccessful race-car driver. Additionally, he has directed a number of television commercials for companies such as Stella Artois and Prada, including an elaborate American Express ad, in which he starred as himself.[25]

Anderson has chosen to direct mostly fast-paced comedies marked by more serious or melancholic elements, with themes often centered on grief, loss of innocence, parental abandonment, adultery, sibling rivalry and unlikely friendships. His movies have been noted for being unusually character-driven, and by turns both derided and praised with terms like "literary geek chic". The plots of his movies often feature thefts and unexpected disappearances, with a tendency to borrow liberally from the caper genre.[29]

Anderson has been noted for his extensive use of flat space camera moves, obsessively symmetrical compositions, snap-zooms, slow-motion walking shots, a deliberately limited color palette, and hand-made art direction often utilizing miniatures.[30] These stylistic choices give his movies a highly distinctive quality that has provoked much discussion, critical study, supercuts and mash-ups, and even parody. Many writers, critics and even Anderson himself have commented that this gives his movies the feel of being "self-contained worlds", or a "scale model household". According to Michael Chabon, with "a baroque pop bent that is not realist, surrealist or magic realist", but rather might be described as "fabul[ist]".[31][not in citation given]